by Jay Williams

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The SPA needs a course correction

February 5, 2020

|Jay Williams, Jr.

The Advocate

First Scots’ Fellowship Hall was so packed for January’s Charlestowne Neighborhood Association meeting, that some CNA members were left standing to hear the presentation from the State Ports Authority (SPA).

Ms. Barbara L. Melvin, the SPA’s chief operating officer, began by touting the port’s decade of continuous annual growth, dredging the harbor from 45’ to 52’, the new Leatherman Terminal project, its 535 employees and $300 million in annual revenues. Then she got to its cruise business.

The attendees perked up.

The cruise industry represents just four percent of the SPA’s business, Ms. Melvin said and we’re staying within our “voluntary restrictions” of 104 ships a year, with a 3,500 passenger limit, hosting only one ship in port at a time. She also said that they have made “traffic more tolerable for people who live downtown,” adding that they pay for the off-duty police officers to assist.

But when Ms. Melvin veered close to addressing a passenger fee for the city, she demurred and said, “These passengers are cargo. We, as a port, are not in the tourism business.”

For many present, hoping for a discussion on quality of life issues, that assertion was nonsensical. “My jaw dropped,” said Carrie Agnew, executive director of Charleston Communities for Cruise Control, “It’s such an insensitive thing to say to people who live here.”

It wasn’t the first time.

The Advocate quoted Jim Newsome, the SPA’s president and CEO, last year as he offered that same argument. And again two weeks ago when Newsome told the Post and Courier, “We’re not in the tourist business; we’re in the maritime commerce business. The city doesn’t have a right to tax maritime commerce, so we think it’s an idea that doesn’t have legs.”

But here on land, that “maritime commerce” literally has legs. It is inundating our city and it’s as unwanted and as frequent as the flooding. The SPA’s “cargo” drives their cars through the city, ambles down our streets, uses our city’s infrastructure and facilities, leaves litter and debris and meanders through our shops seldom buying anything because this “cargo” knows they’re sailing to the Bahamas or the Caribbean to spend their money.

In many ports, the city owns the cruise terminal, but Charleston’s ports are owned by the SPA, a public-private consortium very loosely supervised by the state legislature. This autonomy has buttressed the SPA’s intransigence.

City Councilmember Mike Seekings offered his thoughts after the meeting, “We’re in the business of running a historic city that is growing, that has needs and that means we need better infrastructure to support the maritime business.

“The cruise business,” Seekings said, “is not just water based with no impact on the land. They’re using the city’s resources and we’re getting nothing. Those passengers transit on and across city property and they wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the cruise ships.”

A Landing Fee

What’s Seeking’s solution? “We don’t want to tax cruise ships, but we should have a landing fee for people coming in and out of the city. People who are using our resources should help pay for our resources,” he said. “Right now there’s only one industry exempt from that.”

“To allow someone at the end of Market Street to do hundreds of millions in business by taking people away from the city of Charleston, without paying any benefits to us, is inequitable,” Seekings said. “When people make that transition from maritime commerce into the city of Charleston, that’s the transition point where we collect that landing fee.”

Mayor John Tecklenburg took a slightly different approach in his State of the City address last week, citing flooding, “That’s why we’ll be meeting with state officials in the coming months to discuss changes in state law that would allow all our visitors, including hotel guests and cruise ship passengers, to help fund flooding solutions … supporting a responsible, reasonable extension of Home Rule …”

Jack O’Toole, the city’s director of communications, added emphasis to the mayor’s comments, “There are eight million people who come here and 140,000 who live here and we all need to contribute to solving the flooding problem. We need to look at the big picture.” O’Toole said the city is in conversations with the state delegation to work with the legislature to change the law so the city can raise taxes on tourists. “Under state law right now, we can’t raise the money,” O’Toole noted.

There’s another solution we should advance immediately. We could negotiate directly with Carnival to get voluntary fees for Charleston. Carnival is in the consumer business, they likely don’t view their passengers as “cargo,” and they may be open to offering the city a pass-through cost of $20 per passenger. It would be good public relations for Carnival and both the mayor’s office and Seekings thought the idea was worth pursuing.

The three-by-three-by-three Opportunity

Too little is known about an important Army Corps of Engineers Charleston Peninsula Study, guided by “the three-by-three-by-three rule.” Launched in October, 2018, this feasibility study will evaluate all possible actions to provide long-term coastal storm and flood risk management all around the Charleston peninsula. Depending on the location, those options could include concrete walls, tide gates and breakwaters as well as soft barriers and enhanced marshes.

This study is so named because it will be completed in three years, for $3 million and will involve all three levels of Corps review. Although this federally-funded study won’t be finished until October 2021, a draft report will be released for public review this April.

This is a big opportunity, Seekings says, citing the plethora of issues that must be discussed between the ports authority and the city. “We need to engage in conversation. This study may recommend a 12’ linear, land-based wall that could seriously affect Ports Authority property. Also, the SPA wants to sell parts of Union Pier anyway, even if they get permission to build a new terminal there. That land is wildly valuable. But the city controls the zoning and that zoning will impact the value,” Seekings noted. “We should be partnering.”

The Advocate has consistently recommended that the SPA move cruise ships up river to the Veteran’s Terminal. It has better access to major highways, plenty of parking and is better positioned for homeland security in this age of threats and viruses. This is just one of the many topics the SPA should put on the table for serious discussion.

The three-by-three-by-three study is coming up and any solution will impact both the ports and the city. The Union Pier land is exceptionally valuable and must be sold for a higher and better use than a waterfront parking lot — ideally a small-scale urban development consistent with historic Charleston’s downtown. Charleston is environmentally fragile from the water and on land; by definition, a cruise terminal is a threatening neighbor. At minimum, there must be remote parking to eliminate traffic gridlock and shore power to further reduce pollution. And Charleston doesn’t have enough money to address the frequent flooding conditions jeopardizing cruise passenger access or the city itself.

The SPA needs to come about.

Is the Sunshine drawing rave reviews?  Not from Charleston residents.     This isn’t about the heat; this Sunshine is the third in line of ever-larger Carnival ships to be home-ported here. For one citizen “sucked into the traffic undertow” on the East Side, the 3,000-passenger Sunshine represents a chilling reminder of the negative, largely unregulated repercussions of the SC State Ports Authority’s (SPA) cruise terminal operations in Charleston.     For years, the SPA has run roughshod over residents’ concerns about cruise ship pollution, noise, traffic, congestion, and illegal dumping and environmental impacts. Bringing in a newer, bigger ship that instantly increases traffic, tourists, and congestion makes everything worse—and there’s no end in sight.  These ships will get bigger.     Watch the Supreme Court argument   Can neighboring residents rein in the SPA and reduce the harmful effects of the cruise terminal?  The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear oral argument on this decisive case at 10 a.m., June 11thin Columbia.  If you care about your rights, you need to be there.  The significance of this decision goes well beyond the cruise terminal issue.   For eight years the SPA has relentlessly pursued the construction of a new cruise terminal declaring that the existing terminal is inadequate and doesn’t meet Homeland Security requirements.  But to build on the harbor, it needs both federal and state permits.   The SPA applied for and received its federal permit.  But six years ago, after opponents filed suit to oppose it, United States District Court Judge Richard Gergel tossed the SPA’s federal permit to build a $35 million terminal at Union Pier and blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to adequately review the project’s effects as mandated by Congress. “I think you did an end run,” he told the Army Corps lawyers. “You gave this permit the bum’s rush.   “You haven’t done what the law requires you to do by reducing a 108,000 square-foot project to 41-square feet of pilings,” he said.  The federal judge also referenced evidence contained in a 1,200-page filing that the new terminal is being designed for larger ships than now call here, and that the new terminal could more than triple the number of cruise passengers visiting the city.     The Army Corps is expected to render its revised decision later this year.   South Carolina has a parallel permitting role.  The SPA got a state permit for a new cruise terminal from DHEC, the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control.  Once again, that permit was challenged– this time the result was different.   Administrative Law Judge Ralph King Anderson III ruled that thecitizens’ group plaintiffs which included environmental, historic preservation, and neighborhood groups, “lacked standing” and couldn’t challenge DHEC’s approval of the permits. The groups appealed, but the SC Court of Appeals sided with Judge Anderson, forcing them to make a final appeal to the SC Supreme Court.   Blan Holman, managing attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Charleston office who represents some of the citizens’ groups said, “On June 11th, the Supreme Court will hold oral argument on whether neighbors have any standing to challenge the lawfulness of permits issued for a new cruise terminal that would be located right next door to them.  Lower courts held that neighbors do not have standing because the injuries are felt by too many people.    “We contend that injury to more than one person does not render a permit unchallengeable.  If anything it should require stricter review. The hearing is open to the public so that those interested can see the wheels of justice in motion. The court won’t rule at the hearing, but will issue an order some number of months down the road.”   Many observers suggest that there are broader citizens’ rights issues involved.   Attorney Holman agrees, “The issue before the Supreme Court goes to the right of families and property holders across South Carolina to contest unlawful pollution permits. If a person who physically experiences soot pollution first-hand at her home has no standing, then it is hard to imagine who would ever have standing. That should be a concern statewide since it would limit citizens’ rights to contest permits for toxic waste facilities, sewage plants, nuclear sites — you name it.”   The cruise industry powerhouse   In May, 2015, SPA CEO James Newsome told city council that the “one sector that has not grown at all is the cruise sector” citing similar passenger counts of 186,000 for both 2011 and 2015. “It’s not a growth industry, we’ve said that from the start.” He added, “The market for cruise ships in this port is not that big, it will never be that big.” Later in that speech, Newsome said that, “In 2010 … we had 67 cruise ships.” What he didn’t say was that Charleston would host 93 ships that year—an increase of almost 30-percent.   Perhaps CEO Newsome didn’t realize that worldwide cruise industry growth was exploding.  In 1990, four million cruisers set sail, but last year 27.2 million cruised the oceans, and 35-percent of them sail into the Caribbean.  Here in Charleston, we reached the SPA’s “voluntary limit” of 104 ships annually for the third year in a row.      Cruise passenger growth distresses most downtown residents. Although the SPA voluntarily agreed to a limit of 104 ships annually with a maximum of 3,500 passengers per ship, those limits aren’t binding. A much-heralded city ordinance during Mayor Riley’s reign did not codify those limits as many had thought; it merely obligates the SPA notify the city a year in advance if it wants to exceed those “limits.”   As they wait for their permits, the SPA has lived up to its “voluntary limits.” But because these limits are not binding, you have to wonder what will happen if the SPA gets the permits necessary to build a new terminal.   Since 2011, citizens opposing the Union Pier site have proposed an elementary solution: Locate the new cruise terminal away from historic downtown. Potential sites include the underused 110-acre Veterans Terminal at the old Navy base near highways and able to handle cruise traffic without creating congestion.    But the SPA has repulsed every suggestion to mitigate the negative impacts on Charleston, including moving it, adding shore power, adding a passenger fee to aid the city, developing off-site parking to reduce cruise traffic congestion, and returning some of the world’s most valuable waterfront parking lot to the city for taxable housing and development.   Carnival is no prize either.  Since 2017, Carnival ships have been on probation by the federal government after the company admitted to “record falsification and numerous instances of prohibited discharge,” including multiple violations in Charleston waters.   The SPA can’t be left unleashed.  Residents must have legal rights to protect their health and property, and any cruise terminal permit must include key restrictions to protect our city.   This Supreme Court hearing could not be more important. #  #  # CHS | A blog commentary about Charleston.  Please share with friends. Comments are always welcome – please click on the reply button. Comments, if published, will be posted anonymously.   This column appears as “The Advocate” on page 2 of The Charleston Mercury.

By Jay Williams, Jr.

As Venice, Italy plans a multi-billion dollar mainland cruise terminal in response to cruise ship damage to the historic island city, the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SPA) is fixated on opening a new cruise terminal as close as possible to Charleston’s Historic District.

As Venetian officials voted to divert large cruise ships weighing over 96,000 tons away from St. Mark’s Square, the Grand Canal and the Ducal Palace, Carnival Cruise Lines announced that the 103,000 ton Carnival Sunshine will be home-ported near the end of Market Street.

As “Venice has faced an onslaught of tourism that has challenged the city’s character, clogged its narrow waterways and chased its local population away,” reports The New York Times, “There emerged no clearer symbol for the invasion of tourists than the cruise ships drifting, lunar-like, through the lagoon. They eclipsed church towers, famous views and, occasionally, the sun.”

Ironically, it’s the Sunshine, the largest Carnival ship ever home-ported here, that will block our sun and views. She accommodates 3,002 passengers, 50 percent more than the Ecstasy she’ll replace.

Charleston is sailing backwards, refusing to grasp the enormous damage the worldwide cruise industry has inflicted on historic port cities. We must confront the issue of a downtown cruise terminal head on.

Since 2011, citizens opposing the Union Pier site have proposed an elementary solution: Locate the new cruise terminal away from historic downtown. Potential sites include the Columbus Street Terminal, now mostly used as a parking lot and a shipping site for BMWs and the 110-acre Veterans Terminal at the old Navy base, not used for much of anything, yet near highways and able to handle cruise traffic without creating congestion.

Predictably, the SPA has repulsed every suggestion offered to mitigate the impacts of a cruise terminal downtown, including shore power and that includes moving it.

Now there’s a new question: Is the SPA attempting to ensure that it can’t be moved?

Last December, the SPA announced that it was selling 7.2 acres along with a 9,100 square foot building on Morrison Drive at the entrance to the Columbus Street Terminal. This on-street parcel, well away from downtown, would have provided an ideal entry for cruise terminal traffic.

Then last month, the SPA announced that it’s been negotiating a land swap that would hand over the Veterans Terminal to the Coast Guard and Homeland Security. Yet “in 2016,” reported the Post and Courier, “the SPA objected to a proposal to locate a new cruise ship facility at Veterans Terminal, saying that repairs would cost too much and that the terminal would play a key role in supporting a new cargo terminal being built at the nearby former Navy Base.”

The explosive growth in cruise travel

In May, 2015, SPA CEO James Newsome told city council that the “one sector that has not grown at all is the cruise sector” citing similar passenger counts of 186,000 for both 2011 and 2015. “It’s not a growth industry, we’ve said that from the start.” He added, “The market for cruise ships in this port is not that big, it will never be that big.”

Later in that speech, Newsome said that “In 2010 … we had 67 cruise ships.” What he didn’t say was that in 2015, Charleston would host 93 ships.

This year we’ve reached the SPA’s voluntary annual limit of 104 ships, for the second year in a row. And starting next year, Carnival predicts that the Sunshine alone will carry 220,000 passengers annually — “roughly matching the total number of passengers all ships brought to Charleston last year.” That’s a significant jump, because an additional 28 non-Carnival ships will visit Charleston this year.

Worldwide, cruise passengers soared from 4 million in 1990 to 25 million today.

Cruise passenger growth troubles many downtown residents. Although the SPA voluntarily agreed to limits of 104 ships annually with a maximum of 3,500 passengers per ship, those limits aren’t binding. A much-heralded city ordinance didn’t codify those limits as many thought; it only obligated the SPA notify the city a year in advance if it wants to break through those limits.

So far, the SPA has lived up to its voluntary limits and claims that will continue. Yet the SPA is still awaiting permission to build a terminal downtown at Union Pier, with an existing 1800-foot pier that can dock the world’s biggest ships.

If the SPA’s terminal application survives a citizens’ appeal in the S.C. Supreme Court and if its application is approved by the Army Corps of Engineers — in other words, if the SPA gets everything it wants — what will happen to those voluntary limits?

It’s not just the added traffic, noise, pollution, the high potential for irreversible environmental damage to the Historic District and the ever-growing discharge of cruise passengers onto our small-scale city that so strongly argues against a downtown cruise terminal. It’s economics and common sense.

That 63-acres on Union Pier may represent the most prized undeveloped waterfront property in the Southeast.

“It’s quite valuable,” one prominent commercial broker said, “it would depend on building heights and zoning allowed, of course, but harbor and waterfront property is very, very hard to come by. And private development is certainly a higher and better use than industrial or a cruise terminal.”

Hard evidence supports that opinion — the SPA’s 3.5-acre Concord Street waterfront headquarters sold for $38 million.

The lowest and worst use

The SPA plans to develop the southern 40 acres of the property. But using the remaining 23 prime acres for a cruise terminal, especially with nine acres of paved surface parking for cruise passengers, must be the lowest and worst use for this exceptional property.

“Acres of land for surface parking there is illogical,” said Jason Crowley, director of Communities and Transportation for the Coastal Conservation League, “and it doesn’t make any sense to sell any SPA property until we have a solution to the cruise terminal location that the city is involved in.”

“We should be addressing our resilience issues and restoring the shoreline back to a spongy, natural state that can absorb the velocity of water as it comes in,” Crowley said. Union Pier’s “hard edge” and acres of pavement that allows the water to “run off and flood our streets,” is inimical to resilience planning.

The SPA’s Newsome, quoted about an entirely different parcel, said selling off that property “will allow us to focus on our business as well as benefit the economy by returning public property to the local tax base.”

Union Pier is also “public property,” and the SPA can no longer stonewall public involvement. And the terminal’s “hard edge” with nine acres of paved parking is inexcusable and unacceptable.

Cruise ships represent just five percent of SPA revenues, the city receives no passenger revenue whatsoever and because Carnival passengers sail to become tourists in Nassau or Freeport, they don’t spend much money here.

A cruise terminal at Union Pier would constitute a misuse of this exceptional property, yet a planned 63-acre downtown development would transform the city, adding millions in tax revenues.

Charleston can’t afford this terminal plan. And if we don’t stop it, Venice won’t be the only city under water.

Jay Williams, Jr. arrived in Charleston in 2001 to escape the cold and relax in the warmth of a better culture and climate. This all worked well until May of 2011 when he attended a cruise terminal discussion at Physicians Hall.

 

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The Advocate

By Jay Williams, Jr.

There’s good reason for the cruise terminal controversy. Union Pier may be the worst place to put it.

There must be a balance between residents’ quality of life and the cruise ship tourism that Jonathon B. Tourtellot, a National Geographic Fellow, once called “the strip mine of tourism.”

On April 12, more than 125 citizens attended an Army Corps of Engineers public hearing as part of a process to decide if the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SPA) should be given a permit to build a new terminal at Union Pier. (See many comments on our letters to the editor section on pages 14 and 15.) Col. Matthew Luzzatto, commander of the Army Corps’ Charleston office, stood as he listened to two hours of public comments. Most speakers highlighted the negative impacts from cruise ships and respectfully offered options to reduce them. Before making its decision to approve the permit, approve it with special conditions or deny it, the Corps will review all comments submitted by May 12, 2016.

The Corps previously approved a “maintenance” permit with no public comment, but citizens appealed. In 2013, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel tossed that permit and chastised the Corps’ review process saying, “The Army Corps of Engineers, unreasonably and unlawfully, restricted its ‘scope of analysis’ to an insignificant fraction of the project that lay within the agency’s jurisdiction.”

Real growth, real issues

The SPA submitted revealing information to the court. Quoting from the ruling, “The Ports Authority has acknowledged that a cruise ship terminal can ‘present special challenges’ in ‘managing automobile and pedestrian traffic,’ ‘protecting the environment,’ ‘and preserving Charleston’s unique character’ and ‘there are still lingering questions about how well the cruise ship business will fit into the context of this diverse, world class city.’” “Evidence provided by the Ports Authority supports the [opponents] claim … that the number of cruise ships and passengers has increased in recent years and the proposed new and larger passenger terminal would likely significantly increase the number and size of cruise ships visiting Charleston and the volume of cruise passengers in the historic Charleston waterfront.”

From 2000 to 2013, the number of Charleston’s cruise ship passengers increased by 547 percent. So with a new 100,000 sq.-ft. terminal featuring an 1800’ pier, the home-ported 2,056-passenger Carnival Ecstasy could be replaced with a 3,450-passenger ship, creating new impacts even under current limits. In that 2013 ruling, the Court, citing SPA data, concluded that simply to service this increased volume of passengers on an average cruise day, “up to 20 tractor trailers, 16 small trucks, 32 busses, 90 taxis and 1600-passenger vehicles would need access to the very confined” terminal area that “lies immediately adjacent to the Charleston Historic District and the Ansonborough neighborhood.”

What about even more ships, traffic and impacts? In January, Cruise Industry News Quarterly wrote, “While Carnival remains the port’s number one customer, there is the potential for another home-ported line, as the city recently completed doubling the size of its airport.” And the new Union Pier cruise terminal would be much larger, able to berth two ships simultaneously.

Last May at Charleston City Council, Jim Newsome, the SPA’s CEO, asserted that Charleston’s cruise business “is not a growth industry,” noting that in 2010, “we had 67 cruise ships.” He didn’t say that Charleston would host 93 port calls in 2015. This year, Charleston will host 100 ships. That sure looks like growth.

That ordinance doesn’t limit anything

We’re now just a few ships short of the SPA’s own voluntary limit of 104 ships per year. No worries, right, because of that much-heralded City Council ordinance passed to address to cruise concerns. But that ordinance didn’t limit anything. It only requires the SPA to notify the city one year in advance when plans to exceed the voluntary limits of 104 cruise ship visits or the 3,500-passenger maximum. So if the promise isn’t kept, there are no consequences.

On the night the ordinance passed, the SPA’s public relations director, Byron Miller, sent an email confirming the ordinance’s irrelevancy: “As you’ll recall, this ordinance does not limit or impact in any way the cruise business in Charleston.”

At last May’s City Council meeting, SPA CEO Jim Newsome, mostly reaffirmed this earlier quotation: “In my view, cruising is a maritime commerce business, not a tourism business,” he said. “It’s more like an airport. Sure they may stay a night or two before or after the cruise, but for us it’s about the maritime commerce.” That night he said, “Most of the cruise passengers … board the Carnival Fantasy to become tourists, but in Nassau and Freeport.”

Carnival cruisers are not coming to Charleston; they’re going through Charleston. So much for those touted economic benefits.

This time, it’s a different process

This time, the Corps must abide by the congressionally mandated Section 106 process to assess all environmental and historic impacts.

 

So it was confusing to hear Army Corps’ project manager Nat I. Ball’s opening at the hearing when he said that as a terminal was already in Charleston, “We’re focused on the changes that would occur … From what occurs at Union Pier today, we’re looking at that increment of change.”

That sparked a response from Blan Holman, managing attorney at the Charleston office of the Southern Environmental Law Center: “The Corps needs to consider this for what it is — a brand new and much larger cruise terminal in the heart of Charleston’s historic downtown. Calling a $35-million-dollar terminal ‘maintenance’ or treating this project as a nip and tuck takes us back to 2013 when we should be moving forward.”

Besides ship limits and alternate terminal locations, other issues beg for solutions, but the SPA hasn’t offered a single concession on any of them:

Shore power. The Coastal Conservation League’s Katie Zimmerman says that “nitrogen oxides and carbon oxides are not addressed by scrubbers” but that shore power virtually eliminates them, noting that the SPA’s “air quality monitor measures regional impacts, not localized hot spots.” “Additionally,” she said, “tests of scrubbers have shown possible increases in high concentrations of a number of harmful compounds in the water around the ships.

Though shore power will cost $4-5 million, that’s minor compared to the terminal’s $35 million price tag and the federal government has paid much of this cost at other ports.

Parking and traffic. Unbelievably, the SPA is planning for nine acres of surface parking at Union Pier on perhaps the most valuable undeveloped waterfront property in America. And even with a rail line available, the SPA has rebuffed remote parking solutions.

The Corps’ October 21-22 traffic study drew skepticism as it was done so soon after major flooding dampened tourism. The study showed increased cruise day traffic, but questions of validity suggest that it should be repeated this month.

Asymmetrical impacts. Charleston gets no revenue from cruise ships. No berthing fees, no head taxes and no property taxes — every dime goes to the SPA. Yet the city and its citizens bear all the heavy impacts of managing tourists driving in and spewing out from the terminal.

 

The concerns above help explain why some cities, after being badly damaged by cruise ship tourism like Venice and Hamilton, Bermuda, are moving cruise terminals away from the historic districts and city centers. Although Key West is now trying to limit cruise operations, it’s already too late to preserve what was there.

The vast majority of cruise critics are not seeking to end all cruises; however, noise, soot, traffic, water quality and ship and passenger scale must be regulated as any tourist business. Many citizens are saddened by the visual pollution of colossal modern cruise ships towering over iconic church steeples, shattering the ambiance and patina of this historic city; but, the noise, smells, traffic and pollution make them angry.

The SPA owns the Veterans and Columbus Street terminals, closer to highways and with more space. Given that the SPA considers a cruise terminal to be like an airport and refuses any tourism regulation or compromise on any issue, denying the permit at Union Pier may be only sensible solution.

 

Voice your opinion: Written comments on the proposed Union Pier cruise terminal must be received by May 12, 2016:

 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Regulatory Division

Attn: Nat Ball

69-A Hagood Ave.

Charleston, S.C. 29403